This Shabbat will be all about our place. Literally. We get to dedicate and celebrate our place in the wider community with our MP Sarah Sackman, our Mayor and our Councillors. We are very much woven into the fabric of things here in Finchley, in Barnet, in London. And of course we also have been the place for our families, our members and those who have found consolation and joy within our walls. The word in Hebrew for place is makom. In post Biblical literature, the rabbis started to see makom as symbolising God, or goodness or the sacred.
So how extraordinary that this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayeitze refers to makom so repeatedly. Jacob, our Patriarch, has left his mother, his father and his home, taking with him only his birthright, stolen from his brother Esau, from whom he is now running. He’s alone, maybe for the first time, and primed for an experience.
He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.
וַיִּפְגַּ֨ע בַּמָּק֜וֹם וַיָּ֤לֶן שָׁם֙ כִּי־בָ֣א הַשֶּׁ֔מֶשׁ וַיִּקַּח֙ מֵאַבְנֵ֣י הַמָּק֔וֹם וַיָּ֖שֶׂם מְרַֽאֲשֹׁתָ֑יו וַיִּשְׁכַּ֖ב בַּמָּק֥וֹם הַהֽוּא׃
Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely יהוה is in this place, and I did not know it!”
וַיִּיקַ֣ץ יַעֲקֹב֮ מִשְּׁנָתוֹ֒ וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אָכֵן֙ יֵ֣שׁ יְהֹוָ֔ה בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א יָדָֽעְתִּי׃
Shaken, stirred up, he said, “How incredible is this place.”
…וַיִּירָא֙ וַיֹּאמַ֔ר מַה־נּוֹרָ֖א הַמָּק֣וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה…
Sefat Emet (Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Ger, 19th–20th century) wrote a great deal about makom, place, in this moment of Torah, explaining sometimes we have to be ready for the revelation, for the feeling and meaning that exudes from the place if we let it. Jacob sees what’s there, hamakom – truly sees it. Maybe it’s his first spiritual awakening. I wonder for all of us what places and moments have moved us and offered a magical sense of makom, of being in the place that you need to be.
I feel that right now in our renewed sanctuary. The whole synagogue has been lovingly restored to show its beautiful bones, as our architect Phyllida Mills identified, and this is why taking a moment to acknowledge this place and all it does and symbolises is a good thing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
P.S.
For those who’d like and are able to be good neighbours (or angels) on Christmas Day by driving nurses to and from North London Hospice please be in touch with me. I am gathering a small group of us. Thank you.
I am in New York this Shabbat. Invited to preach at the installation of our former student rabbi James Feder in his first congregation, I wanted to be there. What a time to travel in the ‘Jewish’ world and to experience mood and feelings! These are interesting days to be here in Manhattan, with the new Mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Here, politics has very much permeated the Bimah, as countless rabbis in NYC speak about the mayoral election, even guiding their congregants which way to vote. Gone are the days when the political could be kept out of the synagogue.
This week in London, as our government continues to challenge the small boat crossings and in so doing, the perceptions of immigration, Lord Alf Dubbs, good friend of FPS, spoke about the way we refer to refugees and those seeking asylum as core to our humanity and the British values of which we’ve become proud. He reminded us all that he owes his life to Sir Nicolas Winton z’l and to the welcome of the Jewish community and Great Britain. Immigration is both separate from, and deeply connected to, our language about the other. I welcomed hearing our friend this week at a time when we needed him.
Parashat Toldot, the Torah portion this week, cements the idea and potential of difference to create animosity or distrust when it is just an idea in our matriarch Rebekah’s heart and head. Confused by her pregnancy, she wonders, if this is so why do I exist? She’s told:
Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will come from you, and one shall be stronger than the other.
Rebekah leans into this divisiveness with her support of Jacob’s deceit over his brother Esau. It’s a difficult passage to read. I learned a new text this week from the book of Jubilees, which was written in approximately 100BCE and is in the Apocrypha and not the main Tanach. When Rebekah is dying, she calls her sons and husband to reconcile and tells them that nothing matters more than love and connection. She even apologies to Esau for her unmotherly stance and offers love. And guess what? In a magnificent death bed scene we might all wish for, they all do it. They say yes. They say who else could I love like this? What is there more than love? and in the case of Esau, he forgives her for her suspect parenting.
It’s the most unexpected and beautiful text, extremely comforting to read right now.
Nothing stays the same forever. Nothing. May reconciliation and kindness be available to us all.
I so look forward to seeing you at our Civic Shabbat Service of Rededication next week, 29th November, where we will welcome our MP, Sarah Sackman KC, our Mayor Rabbi Danny Rich and many of our Councillors and honoured guests like you.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
יִּהְיוּ֙ חַיֵּ֣י שָׂרָ֔ה מֵאָ֥ה שָׁנָ֛ה וְעֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה וְשֶׁ֣בַע שָׁנִ֑ים שְׁנֵ֖י חַיֵּ֥י שָׂרָֽה׃
Sarah’s lifetime—the span of Sarah’s life—came to one hundred and twenty-seven years.
וַתָּ֣מׇת שָׂרָ֗ה בְּקִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע הִ֥וא חֶבְר֖וֹן בְּאֶ֣רֶץ כְּנָ֑עַן וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ׃
Sarah died in Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan; and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.
This week’s portion, Chayei Sarah, tells of Sarah’s death. The repetition of the word year, or ’shanah’ in Hebrew, emphasises the importance of all her life and the equity of all parts. Her husband Abraham is also the first person ever, in Torah, to offer a eulogy, in Hebrew a hesped. That’s how we learned to mark our loss and express our grief, by sharing it with others. Remembering and mourning is our duty, honouring whole lives of those we recall and loved personally but also generations who went before us.
This week is the anniversary of ‘Kristallnacht,’ known as the November Pogrom, 9/10 November 1938. 1,200 synagogues were desecrated and thousands of Jewish businesses and homes looted. Following the assassination of a junior diplomat in Paris by a young Polish Jew, the Nazi Party incited mass anti-Jewish violence, claiming it as a spontaneous popular ‘retaliation’ against the ‘enemy within’. 90 people were killed and over 25,000 Jewish men were arrested and deported to Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Alfred Wiener and his colleagues at the Jewish Central Information Office in Amsterdam collected over 350 testimonies and reports. This doctor’s report below is from the Wiener Library collection.
On the notorious Thursday evening when the synagogues burned and the shops and homes were wrecked, I was arrested by the Gestapo with the explanation, “We must take you into Schutzhaft in connection with the events of this day.“ I was transferred to the remand prison and remained there one day. Treatment there quite correct, perhaps it could even be called friendly. Released towards evening, so that at first the thought occurred to us that we would be released to go home… Arrival in Buchenwald: order to get out. Even louder and cruder shouts and hail of insults. Order: “Hats off.” Again herded at top speed and then a proper running of the gauntlet. We had to pass between two lines of SS men, one punched and kicked, the other beat us with knuckle-dusters and whips. .. Again it was the case that agile younger men got away with a couple of blows whilst the older men, some of whom were suffering acutely, emerged from the alley bleeding and limping..Basically in Buchenwald there is no treatment of wounds for Jews. They have no claim to bandaging material, to medication or to any medical help whatsoever.
We will light a yahrzeit candle into our shabbat service this Friday, making space for honouring these memories.
Shabbat Shalom
Rebecca
This week has seen the return of Col. Asaf Hamami, 40, Capt. Omer Neutra, 21, and Staff Sgt. Oz Daniel, 19, to be buried at home with their families.
The return of children to their parents has not happened for everyone. Young people dying is particularly difficult to bear – and we know it, as we have watched countless deaths in Gaza, as well as in Israel. I always remind myself of Rachel Goldberg saying almost two years ago, If you are not crying for the death of babies on both sides then your moral compass is askew. I have officiated at many funerals where parents are burying their children and it is unbearable each time. As so it should be.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayera, describes Abraham seemingly agreeing to the slaughter of his son, Isaac, at his own hands and the probable, indeed assured, death of his older son, Ishmael, when he’s sent into the wilderness with his mother and only one skin of water. Despite the gentle language, the stories are brutal and we must make sense of them every year as we read this passage (and again on Rosh Hashanah).
Neither of the boys dies but surely both are traumatised from the near death experience. Perhaps Torah is teaching one clear lesson: never stop being outraged and shocked by these deaths. Abraham is inexplicably silent in the face of both plans, although he is distressed:
The matter distressed Abraham greatly on account of his son. (21:11)
Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, finds his impending death from thirst so unbearable she has to sit a bow’s shot off once she has given him all the water she has.
“Let me not look on as the child dies.” She sat at a further distance and burst out crying.” (21:16)
It’s fascinating that we never see Abraham again with his children, these two sons. Nothing matters more than our capacity to be moved by violence and untimely deaths – surely it’s’ what makes us human. Torah manages, in its tenacity and understated emotion, to hit hard and to offer the most intense of commentaries on familial life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
I love that we return to FPS the week we read this portion of Lech Lecha.
“The Eternal One said to Abram, Go forth from your land, your birthplace, your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and it shall be a blessing.” (Gen. 12:1-2)
When called to go on this journey of self-improvement, or of raising money in believing that we could future-proof and build a better more attractive synagogue, I am sure many felt, ‘What is the point in that? Why bother? What might it bring for us?’ But we overcame nerves and launched right in.
When Abram and Sarai are called in this portion of Torah, they don’t answer. They don’t comment. They just do it.
I guess we did it too. Richard Greene, Alan Banes, Paul Silver Myer, Jo Dowling, Alex Kinchin Smith and James Levy just started this move. It was daunting, to say the very least. But as we began, we encouraged each other. Forty weeks, we were told (we are a little over). It gave us something to hold on to and now we are in earnest moving back, unpacking boxes, re-finding ourselves – and it looks even more beautiful than it did at HHDs. May we be the blessing we believe we can be for each other as congregants and as a synagogue that will be attractive and impactful for those who visit us looking for a spiritual home and a welcoming community. May the investment in this place, and the journey we’ve been on too, make it the beginning of a new chapter for this synagogue, where internal and external details match.
I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be unpacking my book boxes onto my new timber shelves. It means so much to be doing so. We have chosen this synagogue to care for, as well our Jewish life in the process.
In his book ‘How Will You Measure Your Life?’, Clayton M. Christenson, a professor at Harvard School of Business, responds to the “should I stay or should I go?” dilemma that confronted Abram.
“ … in life, like in business, we each have limited resources: time, energy, talent and wealth. With every moment of our time, every decision about how we spend our energy, our talent and our money, we are making a statement about what really matters to us.”
In the fractured times in which we live, in the thoughtful way we have chosen to express our Jewish lives, we have also chosen to make FPS matter, not just in ideas but also in the loving care of our home, the bricks and mortar and beautiful new windows. We captured our talent, money and energy for this.
Join us tonight for our inaugural learning event to fill our synagogue, and say what matters most to us as we celebrate and commit to our diversity, as FPS MOSAIC hosts Nadine Batchelor-Hunt, who will speak on the spectrum of Jewish identity as a Black Jewish woman.
This is a whole new chapter for us. Let’s ensure it truly is a ’blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
And the whole earth spoke one language and were united in deeds and actions.
It sounds paradisiacal doesn’t it? Yet this tiny moment of our Torah portion describes God confusing language (balal) within the tower of Bavel. It’s a great story, teaching that unity and sameness is not always as good as it sounds – and diversity is 
better and safer. The Tower of Babel signifies the strength and challenge of diversity and I am leaning in this year to that.
With that in mind, I am so delighted that we are packing up to return to FPS and launch our renewed tower of FPS. We want to be using the beautiful building not only on Shabbat, so the new Education Hub begins on Wednesday evening, 29th October. There will be a choice of different courses and endeavours but to be together.
We launch with a superb event hosted by FPS Mosaic group for Black History month, welcoming the writer and journalist Nadine Bachelor Hunt, who celebrates Black Jewish heritage in our complicated world, in conversation with the Mosaic team. I cannot recommend this enough. Choir will be launched that night too, meeting at 6.30pm and then joining our conversation with Nadine at 7.30pm.
6.30pm FPS Choir
7.00pm Welcome snacks and drinks for the Non Singers
7.30pm Mosaic Team in conversation with Nadine Bachelor Hunt
Shabbat shalom as we return home and properly settle into this brave new year.
Rebecca
They are back – and what a full heart of relief, hope and trepidation has accompanied us this week! A moment of redemption.
Our prayers on Shabbat for peace will be rewritten, our kavannah – our spiritual intention when we pray for the hostages coming home – will be transformed.
Kohelet was wrong, wrote Israel’s poet laureate Yehuda Amichai z’l. I love this. During the week of Sukkot we read Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) chapter 3:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
Yet truthfully we, and so many others, have experienced all these things at once: celebration, relief, fear, sadness at who hasn’t returned alive. We have witnessed the devastation that is Gaza for the families that have survived these 2 years and the grief they hold. Our friend, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, said the same. Hope has accompanied us all. Rabbi Michael Marmur taught that hope – tikveh in Hebrew – has the root KAV, meaning cord. That cord binds and pulls forward and connects us back (just like the Torah scroll we unrolled on Simchat Torah). So this verse from Bereshit, the beginning of our story calls out to us:
וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים | אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ …
And God made human beings in the divine image. Creating it in the image of God…
This being human is complicated, large and heavy, full of fear, sadness and joy – but what a blessing it is.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
It’s always been so challenging to me that Sukkot literally commands joy. It doesn’t suggest it. It’s actually called zman simchateinu – season of our joy. What an interesting tension to hold this week. Today, the second anniversary of 7th October and in the aftermath of the attack on Heaton Park Congregation.
Yet it’s right here in our tradition. We lean in to joy when we may least feel like it. And we invite guests into the sukkah when our instinct might be to close down a little.
But neither option is available to us because we will continue to reach for joy and gratitude and connections.
I feel bereft without our synagogue sukkah this year but last night we had a magical and very packed Sukkot service and celebration chez Katz and this morning such a meaningful service with our friends at SPS.
Wishing you a joyful Sukkot, even if it’s moments in your garden and Shabbat Shalom. I’ll be in Stockholm celebrating the 20th anniversary of the community I helped to build there, which is going from strength to strength. There is joy in that.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
A few years ago, Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk suggested to his community of Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple that, every night of the liminal ten days that float between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, one should do this:
I encourage you: before each nightfall of the ten days of repentance, prepare your testimony. Ask yourself in your heart: are you a person who defaults to truth, or do you greet most of what of what you hear people say with suspicion? Don’t judge your answer. You are who you are, and you will not have a perfect record of judgment and being judged. The mistakes we all make often lead to grudges, vendettas and long-held bad feelings. In my experience, and in keeping with Jewish tradition, it is best to scrutinise the grudges we hold and ask ourselves what they yield that is more fruitful than forgiveness and understanding of oneself and others.
We are told again and again. Yom Kippur, which begins this year on Wednesday evening, is just for us. In order to smooth things with others, we need to pick up the phone, drop a note or just open our hearts a little wider, so that we cope better with those in our lives whose ‘person tax’ gets a little high – and I suppose we would do well to imagine how our ‘tax’ might be onerous for others. Sometimes.
This is the balancing of what matters most to us and the people we live amongst. What matters is when we forget the essence of us, we can now effect some kind of teshuvah (turning) that allows us to return to ourself, to the root of our soul.
I am so looking forward to seeing you over Yom Kippur. We are back at FPS, Hutton Grove.
I wish you a meaningful day. Gmar Chatimah Tovah.
Rebecca
It was exceedingly special in so many ways being back at FPS. Please see this clip that includes Alex Kinchin-Smith’s words about being in the building and our part in it.
These ten days are opportunities to reflect and connect. We are told not to arrive at synagogue for prayer until we’ve connected with those in our lives where there’s friction and fracture. That’s not always easy but it’s an interesting challenge. These days are heightened emotionally: use this time wisely. I try, and don’t always succeed, every year. But what I do manage is to love these days and this season, a time where introspection isn’t just accepted; it’s encouraged.
See you over Shabbat Shuvah (the Shabbat of return or repentance). If you prefer nature to shul, come for Tashlich walk at Dollis Brook and let me know via Caroline () you’re joining.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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